Thursday, May 26, 2016

The Worst Boyfriend in Bolivia

If Bolivia’s widening
political scandal were to be turned into a soap opera, a fitting title would be
“Heartless Ex-Boyfriend.” The protagonists: a Machiavellian statesman and a
former paramour. The plot: She threatens to expose him as a monster, but he is
determined to stay in power indefinitely, even if he has to jail, silence and
discredit her and his critics.

For several months, Bolivians have been glued to the
real-life drama starring President Evo Morales and his former
girlfriend, Gabriela Zapata. In late
February,
Mr. Morales lost a referendum vote that could have allowed him to run for a
fourth term. Voters had become outraged by allegations that Ms. Zapata made a
windfall from Chinese companies who hired her to secure state contracts worth
hundreds of millions of dollars.

The first major plot twist came days after the vote. Having
initially rejected any insinuation of influence peddling, Mr. Morales’s
government arrested Ms. Zapata and charged her with exactly that. Ms. Zapata
soon decided she wasn’t taking the fall alone.

In a series of jailhouse interviews, she cast herself as the
sacrificial lamb of a government that had a lot to hide. For starters, she
contradicted Mr. Morales’s claim that a baby the two produced had died in
infancy. The child, Ms.
Zapata contended, is very much alive. “I am not going to remain
silent,” she told the newspaper El Deber in March. So far, the truth about
their child remains elusive.

She also promised a detailed account of how Mr. Morales,
Bolivia’s first indigenous leader, had evolved from a good guy to a menace.
“Evo Morales was not the monster that he is today,” she said. She and her
lawyers also said she has damaging information about the president’s right-hand
man, Juan Ramón Quintana, the minister of the presidency.

But whether any of this intriguing material will be allowed
to surface — and whether Ms. Zapata will get to defend herself and name names —
is now in doubt. Last week, the government jailed her defense lawyer, Eduardo
León, and an aunt, Pilar
Guzmán, who had corroborated her assertion that Mr. Morales’s son was in
fact alive. Mr. León, a prominent lawyer, has attended court hearings wearing
a sign with the words “political prisoner.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Morales’s allies in Congress have been
peddling bills that would curtail freedom of the press and regulate social
media. What they fail to see is that Mr. Morales’s defeat in February resulted
from damning facts, not critical news coverage. And they are clearly nervous
about the insider account of corruption Ms. Zapata stands to tell if she gets
her day in court.

On Tuesday, Mr.
Morales announced a new referendum campaign, saying that the first one
had been tainted by “lies” about the Zapata case. “During the second inning, we’ll
see who is who,” he said.

Spending millions of dollars on a new referendum is an abuse
of power and an insult to Bolivians who stated clearly just months ago that the
country needs new leadership. A new referendum campaign won’t stop the stream
of damaging stories and embarrassing details, which can only further erode
confidence in a man who has already been in power more than a decade. There’s
no telling how this saga will end, but one thing has become abundantly clear:
Mr. Morales and his allies are making the cover-up worse than the crime.

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De THE NEW YORK TIMES, 25/05/2016

Fotografía: Gabriela Zapata, center, in La Paz, Bolivia, in
February after a judge ordered that she remain in custody.CreditJuan
Karita/Associated Press